`Wintel' Monopoly Appears To Be Solid

October 13, 1999|By Chris Cobbs of The Sentinel Staff

There appears to be no slowing the ``Wintel'' monopoly that dominates personal computing.

Intel Corp.'s new 64-bit microprocessor, bearing the brand name Itanium, will debut next year, and the company will continue to churn out faster chips, the company's chief executive officer said Tuesday at a technology conference in Orlando.

Intel also will introduce ways to keep laptop computers cooler as their speed hits 1-gigahertz in the next year or so, said an analyst for the Gartner Group, which is hosting the conference at Walt Disney World through Friday.

Microsoft, the other half of the ``Wintel'' powerhouse, faces competition in high-end operating systems from upstart Linux, but companies expecting the challenger to be a big money-saver may be disappointed, another Gartner analyst said.

While business grapples with multiple choices in Intel processors, the picture will get more complex next year with the advent of the 64-bit chip.

``Gordon Moore is alive and well, and so is Moore's Law,'' said Intel President and CEO Craig Barrett, referring to a prediction by the Intel co-founder that computing power doubles every year and a half.

Derived from the metal titanium, Itanium chips will be used first in servers and high-end workstations before making their way to the desktop, Barrett said. These faster chips will better handle large databases and multimedia operations, he said.

Despite reporting third-quarter earnings slightly below estimates, the world's largest maker of semiconductors says its core microprocessor business is ``solid.'' In fact, Intel plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development to ensure that chips continue to get faster and more powerful.

Excluding acquisition costs, Intel reported Tuesday a profit of $1.9 billion, or 55 cents a share, up 21 percent from the third quarter a year ago but below analysts' expectations of 57 cents a share.

Revenue jumped 9 percent to $7.3 billion in the quarter, up from $6.7 billion a year ago.

Intel said shipments of microprocessors, chipsets and flash memory chips grew to new records during the quarter and it looks forward to ``seasonally strong'' business in the fourth quarter.

In the area of high-end operating systems, Microsoft Windows NT appears likely to maintain its strong grip on the market, despite a challenge from Linux, the lower-cost alternative, Gartner analyst George Weiss said.

Linux is appealing because it can be obtained free or for next to nothing, depending on the distributor, but it won't be a good fit in many businesses, Weiss said.

Although Linux seems inexpensive in the short run, businesses must also factor in the cost of support and rapid change, Weiss said.